Pectin or no pectin?

[Cassandra]

I just collected enough wild blackberries for jelly today. I made the juice tonight so I can make the jelly this weekend.

I have found a couple of recipes and some of them say use pectin, some don't. How does that work?

Cassandra

 

[Grow 4 Food]

All the jelly that I make (following grandma) uses sure-gel. I think that is pectin. This is used to make it thick or set up like they are suppose to be.

 

[Cassandra]

Yeah, I thought so. I think some fruits (like apples I have heard) have more pectin in them than others, so some fruits don't need pectin to make jelly. But I would be scared to try to make jelly without it...

 

[silkiechicken]

I've been able to make black berry preserves without pectin and lots of sugar, but it is alot thicker than if you add pectin. I believe that the younger the fruit, the more pectin it will naturally have. I also think that if the fruit isn't acid enough, you had to add lemon and the pectin? But I'm not such a jelly maker so these aren't words of experience.

 

[patandchickens]

Largely it depends how ripe your berries are. If there are a lot of underripe ones in there, you might have enough pectin already there; OTOH if they are mostly dead-ripe, I would certainly use commercial pectin.

It also depends how hard a set you want (if you want it to be like commercial jelly you will HAVE to add pectin); and how much you are prepared to test while it's boiling to determine whether it will set (if you don't want to fiddle and guess and learn to do the tests, then just use commercial pectin); and how much you want to preserve the fresh taste of the berries, because quite possibly you might have to boil 'em down a fair bit to get a decent set and that will affect the taste a [little] bit.

I guess, in summary, if you are not an Old Hand at jellies and want a predictable product, use commercial pectin (following directions carefully).

If you are moderately experienced, or want to read up on it a lot and then take a gamble in the name of Learning New Things, TRY boiling it down to the jelling point without added pectin, then if you get frustrated you can always add pectin after all .

Or if you want a more exciting and unpredictable experience AND HAVE LOTS OF UNRIPE BERRIES in there, sure, do it without (but check carefully that you've got it so it will jell).

Failed jellies and jams still make good dessert sauces or additions to fruit salads, etc.

Have fun,

Pat

 

[Cassandra]

Well, thanks you all. I think I will just use pectin anyway. (I've got some. Why take the chance, huh?)

The recipes that did not call for pectin called for about 1/4 of the berries to be unripe. Now I know why.

Hey, look at my avatar. Those berries in the picture are the ones I made juice with last night. I got just enough! The recipes I was looking at called for 3.5 to 4 cups of juice and I ended up getting just about 3.75 cups.

I am excited about it. Maybe I will get the kitchen cleaned up enough this weekend to make jelly. And there should still be enough berry picking left this season to make my little boy a pie. LOL he's been asking for one.

Cassandra

 

[Tutter]

Yeah, I thought so. I think some fruits (like apples I have heard) have more pectin in them than others, so some fruits don't need pectin to make jelly. But I would be scared to try to make jelly without it...

Apples are a nice trick to thickening some things, because of their pectin.

When I make cranberry sauce, I always put a couple of apples in, with seeds and skins. (If I want a lot of work, I drop apple quarters in, then later fish them out and remove meat from skin, and reincorporate the meat. Older and wiser has me peeling the apple etc. and putting the skins and such in cheese cloth, and the meat in with the berries. Just fish out cloth bag when done; squeeze, voila!)

That's how my grandmother made it, and it also had a pleasant mellowing effect for the flavor. You can just use baking apples for a pleasant, mellow flavor, but I like to use apples with interesting flavors to add to the final product. I use the old variety, Blushing Darlings off our tree. There's nothing exactly like it in the store, but Pink Ladies, which are available at Thanksgiving, are a good bet.

Mostly I make jam, pancake syrup and ice cream/angelfood cake etc. toppings with the blackberries we don't use for fresh eating, cobblers, pies, ice cream, sorbet etc. I used to make jelly from them, but decided that jam was great, and easier! I still do make jellies from mint, and some of the grapes, though. (Also grape jam.)

Good luck; I hope you have enough for a pie, and maybe a cobbler!

 

[ducks4you]

I've been able to finally have grape jelly work, but I won't ever try it again WITHOUT using pectin!!! It tasted fine without it, but I like my jelly (made grape and orange marmalade so far) on toast or bread, and I DON'T like it falling off in my lap!!!
BTW, I made my grape jelly from 2008 grapes. I didn't have time to mess with them, so I canned a bunch after I boiled them down, and I even put the skins in some jars. I labelled them as unmade and runny and skins, and wrote the month/year on the seals. There were even some that I froze in a 5 quart, plastic ice cream container that I used, too. Last fall I opened them up, cooked them down and canned...AGAIN. I still only got 4 jars that jelled--the rest were runny. This winter I have been opening them up, one at a time, cook down over the stove, cool, pour back into the jar and put in the fridge to finish. I will ALWAYS use Pectin in the future.

 

[patandchickens]

Redoing jelly without adding pectin the second time round often does not work (*sometimes* it does, but it's a cr*pshoot) because what pectin there IS can get ruined by the prolonged boiling. Sometimes it ends up worse than before -- more of a boiled-down sugar syrup but not actually gelled at all.

When you made your jelly in the first place, though, were you using a recipe for the amount of sugar to use, or did you actually test for pectin content using rubbing alcohol? The latter is MUCH more accurate IMHO, and not that hard to do (too lazy to look up exact directions, you'll find them in any good canning book, basically you mix a dab of the jelly-to-be into a Tbsp or so of rubbing alcohol and see if it gels after a minute or two, then discard *do not taste*)

The reason for this is that the pectin content of your fruit can vary considerably according to variety, freshness, amount of ripe/underripe/overripe fruit, etc.

It is really not difficult to make jams/jellies with no commercial pectin -- and they do use a bit less sugar that way, although for some fruits you have to cook them longer and thus you can't get as uncooked a taste on lower-pectin fruits -- but it IS a bit of a learning experience. Don't give up, try it again, maybe with something more 'guaranteed' (even grapes benefit from having some underripe ones in there) and with testing for pectin, it is not hard to pick up the knack

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[ducks4you]

Thanks, pat!! I'll have to try that. DD, who ASKED me to make the jelly in the first place, decided my grape jelly was too TART!! I REALLY like it a little tart.
FORTUNATELY, I watched a local University of Illinois Gardening program recently and discovered that I didn't have much fruit last year because I had pruned off most of my fruit-bearing growth!! Their advice was to take a No. 2 pencil out with you when you prune--I'm supposed to prune HERE in early March--and leave any growth that is the width of that pencil. The experts said that it's last year's growth that produces the fruit, and it's the thickness of a No. 2 pencil--go figure!!
NOW, I understand that I should be getting rid of growth that is older, and more woody. I noticed Last Year, that I was cutting off redder stems, that looked younger.
I think the problems start in your head. I had bought this gardening book--on clearance, of course!!--that said something like, "it's a disgrace when neglected grape vines are overgrown...you might have to cut them down to the ground and start over,", NOT a direct quote. There was another suggestion: select four "cordons", that have the most buds (when you prune in the spring) from Each VINE, tie a ribbon on them, and prune EVERY OTHER CORDON, but the 4
http://swirlingnotions.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/grapevine.gif
The idea is to produce larger, but few fruit. Don't know, haven't tried it yet. Any thoughts, Pat--or anybody else?